The present invention relates to devices for handling salmon eggs and similar individual pieces of bait for fishing, and to a device for removing salmon eggs individually from a jar and holding an individual salmon egg while it is placed properly on a fishhook for use as bait.
Salmon eggs and other items used as fish bait may be slippery and difficult or uncomfortable to handle. In particular, salmon eggs, used frequently as bait, are difficult to remove individually from the small jars in which they are commonly sold, and are difficult to hold securely in one's fingers while a hook is placed in the egg in such a way that the hook is hidden well enough, yet neither splits the egg nor permits the egg to be too easily knocked free from the hook.
People usually prefer to minimize handling of fishing bait. This is because the bait may be undesirably messy and may leave an odor on one's hands, and also because the effects of handling, particularly the scent of a human, may make the bait less attractive to the fish.
Several types of bait, such as salmon eggs, grubs, marshmallow pieces, and the like are often sold in small glass jars with screw-on covers. Such covers are not particularly convenient to use, since leaving the cover off the jar may result in the contents of the jar being spilled or becoming dried out, while having to unscrew the cover each time a new piece of bait is needed is time consuming and becomes tiresome. On the other hand, it is inconvenient to carry a small open jar of bait while moving along a stream bank in order to fish at different locations, and it is impractical to carry an uncovered jar of bait while wading and fishing.
In the past, various devices have been invented to deal with some of these concerns. Sowards U.S. Pat. No. 4,226,335 discloses a device attachable to a user's belt for carrying a supply of salmon eggs. The device is intended to provide eggs individually, but is mechanically somewhat complex, and the eggs must be loaded into the device from the jar in which the eggs are normally sold.
Walker U.S. Pat. No. 4,428,146 discloses a simpler dispenser for salmon eggs, but the dispenser depends on the ability of the individual eggs to move through a narrow neck. The device holds each egg while it is hooked, but would apparently permit eggs to spill from the dispenser or to dry out within it. As with the Sowards device, salmon eggs must be loaded into the device from the container in which they are purchased by the fisherman.
Wiltrout U.S. Pat. No. 4,133,452 discloses a salmon egg dispenser which requires the eggs to be loaded into a slender tube. Individual eggs are dispensed from the lower end of the tube by use of a plunger. The device apparently requires the eggs, once dispensed, to be held in one's hand while they are hooked.
Cointment U.S. Pat. No. 4,332,408 discloses a device resembling a medicine dropper, for use in removing and replacing soft contact lenses on a human eye. In the Cointment device a squeeze bulb is utilized to provide suction for holding a contact lens in a soft, easily deformable cup mounted on a tubular body at the end opposite the squeeze bulb.
What is needed, then, is a device for easily removing individual salmon eggs or other individual pieces of fishing bait directly from a small jar or similar container, and for holding such an individual salmon egg securely while it is placed properly on a fishhook for use as bait. It is also desirable to have a way to keep such a device together with a container of bait such as salmon eggs so that the bait and the device for placing individual pieces of it on a fishhook are readily available and accessible for use by a fisherman, either on a stream bank or while wading in the stream.